The term ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is understood to mean the networking of physical objects via a communications network, whereby, for example, a more efficient monitoring of the physical objects and an exchange of information relating to the physical objects are made possible.
The Internet of Things is becoming increasingly important, in particular in the field of home automation technology and industry automation technology, wherein the intention is for different physical quantities, such as a temperature or an energy consumption, to be efficiently detected. In the field of home automation technology, heating sensors for the billing of heating costs for example are being increasingly provided with corresponding functionality. In the field of industry automation, the intention is for production sequences to be optimized and performed more efficiently, for example. Corresponding approaches for this purpose are summarized for the most part under the term Industry 4.0, for example.
Economical apparatuses are usually used for the detection of the physical quantity and for the transfer of the data representing the physical quantity. Here, the access to the communications channel is not typically controlled via complex media access control (MAC) methods. The data representing the physical quantity is therefore for the most part transmitted in an uncoordinated form. However, this can lead to collisions and losses of data over the communications channel.
Document EP 2 685 744 A1 describes a method for allocating timeslots for sensor nodes in a wireless sensor node network in the field of industrial process control, wherein the timeslots are arranged in a superordinate superframe.